The Imperial British Navy - How the Colonies Began to Think Imerially Upon the Future of the Navy

THE IMPERIAL BRITISH NAVY HOW THE COLONIES BEGAN TO THINK IMPERIALLY UPON THE FUTURE OF THE NAVY BY H. C. FERRABY WITH TWO MAPS AND THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED YORK STREET, ST. JAMESS LONDON, WHO GAVE ME MY CHANCE AUTHORS NOTE PROBLEMS envisaged are well on the way to resolution. It has been given to the peoples of Britain to evolve out of chaos a unified system of defensive force which shall serve as a shield to cover widely separated parts of the Empire. It is a task that, like all our tasks, we have been dilatory in beginning. In the latter half of the nineteenth century there was desultory discussion of the subject. At intervals for the next three decades Colonial Conferences talked around the subject in an academic way and passed resolutions. It was not all talk, however. Things were done but the doing was spasmodic, the efforts were not co-ordinated. Local considerations dictated policies and not the best needs of the whole Imperial system. In 1892 Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald wrote in this connection War would doubtless bring about federation immediately It is in the hope that such naval federation is at hand, and that it will be achieved with the consent of the several States forming the Empire, that this book has been written. It is a bringing together of the facts connected with the Colonial attempts to found new Navies or to graft their help on to the British Navy. It is a survey of the past, but it is also intended to be a signpost for the future. My hope in writing it has been that I might make clear to the man in Birmingham and in Brisbane, in Pretoria and in Regina, that old but often forgotten truth that the sea is all one. Therefrom depends the great fact in the future defence of the Imperial Commonwealth-that our sea forces must be all one in spirit and in direction if not in actual details. Let us be backed with God and with the seas Which He hath given us for fence impregnable, And with their helps only defend ourselves In them and in ourselves our safety lies.